No Payoff
by PanDaimonia
Summary: Post-X2. Rogue is trying to help, but Logan just wants to be left alone. A look at the not-so-healthy aspect of their relationship.


_In the early winter morning, Logan smokes a cigar beneath her window. She doubts that he does it on purpose, but each morning he stalks the grounds, cigar in hand, and each morning he returns to the same spot. She watches him from there, a shadow behind the thin curtain, as he meditatively smokes his cigar. Always, she winces in pain as he extinguishes it on the palm of his hand._

_Even then, she watches until he leaves, and all that remains of the moment are boot marks on the frosty grass._

Before the sun had completely risen, Rogue snuck into Logan's room. It wasn't what some people might think, she told herself—not what Bobby worried but didn't say, not what the teachers thought of when they worried about inappropriate behavior. Yes, it wasn't usual for teenage girls to be sneaking into men's bedroom but this was different.

Rogue had taken this as her personal duty—taking care of Logan, or so she thought of it. Each morning she repeated the actions like a ritual: she poured the beer down the sink and wrinkled her nose at its odor—a smell that brought back memories of her own father, coming home from the bar angry and reeling with alcohol. She threw the cans in the garbage, where Logan would easily be able to see them, yet so far he had never commented. He just kept replacing the beer.

If some of the other students asked her, she would tell them that she just couldn't bear to see Logan drunk one more day. It was close enough to the truth. Really, she couldn't bear to see him helpless like this. Of all people, she couldn't stand to think of him as pathetic. It frightened her to see him sitting in his room, looking utterly lost. Sometimes she heard him moving around in the middle of the night, then getting up and leaving on Scott's motorcycle. Rogue wondered where he was going, but there was no way she could ask him. It would be too embarrassing to admit that at night she lay awake listening for the treat of his boots on the stairs, and the following roar of the motorcycle engines revving.

Of course it had something to do with Jean's death. She really didn't know how to comfort him. Before, he had always been the one there for her, the one who made her feel safe. Now he was no longer her protector, now it was him who seemed helpless and she who must be strong, but she didn't know how to help him. She was trying—God she was trying—not to let him sink into a self-destructive drinking binge, but she was also worried that if he caught her he would be angry. Rogue was afraid. Maybe after this, he wouldn't want anything to do with her. Maybe this time, he would leave for good, and it would be because of her.

As she had dreaded but half expected, she was caught. He found her in the kitchen one morning, pouring the last of a pack down the drain.

"You're up early," she said lightly, not looking at him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he growled.

She waited pointedly for a long moment as the rest of the can's contents glugged down the sink, turned and dropped the can into the recycling (bin put there on Scott's urging), before facing Logan. "I'm trying to help you."

"Yeah? Well, maybe the first thing you should do is get out of my room."

"I—Logan. Please." Rogue turned to him, her hands clasped tight over her chest, trying to plead with him with her eyes. "Let me help you."

He stood there with his thumbs tucked into his belt loops, just slowly looking her up and down, until her stomach twisted with something like fear—but that wasn't right, because how could she be afraid of Logan?—but she was.

"What do you want, Marie?"

_To be the last person you see before you fall asleep at night. To be the first one you see when you wake up in the morning. To be the person you trust most in the world. For you to love me, hold me so tight it hurts, kiss me like you'll never stop._

"What's best for you!"

"And you think you know?"

She didn't say anything, only stared down wordlessly at her feet.

He laughed, a dark, harsh sound. "Hell, even _I_ don't know what's best for me, let alone how to do it. I've made so many mistakes, mistakes a kid like you would never know about."

"I'm not a kid!"

He continued on. "I shouldn't have kissed her. It was a mistake, I know…even if sometimes I wonder if the mistake was not doing more."

"What?" Rogue's head jerked up. "Kissed who?"

"I thought you'd have figured it out by now."

Then she knew. "Jean." She felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her stomach, and suddenly she felt so exhausted that she just wanted to sit down on the floor

"I think you should go, Marie."

"No." She tried to stay calm and reasonable so he couldn't accuse her of being irrational. "Logan, don't make me go…"

"So many mistakes…" he repeated to himself, as if she had already left. "So many…"

"We all make mistakes. Sometimes you don't have a choice." Rogue wanted to close this gap between them, and she reached out to touch his shoulder, wanting to remind herself that he was near, that he was _Logan_ not some stranger.

"I'm gonna make one right now."

"What?"

"That all you can say?" He reached down and pulled her to him, continuing to staring into her eyes in a way that made her want to shrink from him. "She didn't choose me. But you would, wouldn't you?" He held her there, their faces only a few inches apart, and she stared back, knowing he could feel her tremble, could probably sense her quickening pulse.

He ran his thumb along the curve of her cheek so that only the blunt edge of his fingernail touched her skin. No contact, so it was safe, Rogue thought. Safe. No one would get hurt. With a light touch, too quick for her skin to have any effect, he tilted her chin up and moved close enough to…kiss her?

It was a moment she'd imagined more times than she could remember, but none of her fantasies went like this.

"Don't do that! I could hurt you," she protested.

"I know."

He pushed her away from him then, not hard, but there was no doubt that that was what he was doing. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

"No, no, you're wrong, you…" The words _I love you_ and _I hate you_ seemed to be on her breath at the same time, and instead of she speaking she turned and ran from the room.

* * *

She was sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the early hours of the morning, waiting for him.

"I don't want you waiting for me."

"But I want to wait," she protested, knowing how stubborn she sounded, how immature he must think she was being.

"There's no payoff, Marie. There's nothing here for you."

"I know. You think that's why I'm doing it?" _But I'm waiting anyway, because what if? What if I do have a chance? I'm not going to waste it._

He left anyway, just as she had warned herself that he would.

She waited anyway, like he seemed to know she would, because sometimes you don't have a choice.

* * *

_Sometimes at night, Logan still smokes a cigar beneath her window. She watches him from her room, drawn to him as always, though now there is a hint of repulsion mixed with her fascination.. With one gloved hand she draws back the curtain and watches, a dark silhouette against the halo of light, gazing out into the night. She looks on dispassionately as he extinguishes his cigar on the palm of his hand, remembering that the pain is temporary, that there will be no scar. _

_Even now, she watches as he leaves, tapping the ashes from his cigar and letting them fall. For a second they flare red against the frosty ground, until he grinds them out with the heel of his boot. A moment later, they would have faded anyway._

_Maybe next time she'll be able to look away, but she doesn't believe that. She knows it will happen again and again, and as long as she is there, she will watch. It's a choice she made without thinking. Now, she pays._


End file.
